Month: November 2011

A colleague asked me when he saw me reading Revolution 2020 – the latest novel by Chetan Bhagat. He probably said that because of my age (I am not as young as many of the fans of the Indian writer) or maybe because he thought I need to spent time reading more ‘serious books’. Continue reading “Why I read Chetan Bhagat?”

For non-Maoist supporters, Dr Baburam Bhattarai is the favorite among Maoist leaders. For urban population, the brilliant academic record of Bhattarai, a PhD, along with his no-nonsense statements made him the hope in Nepali politics at the time when many thought politics is made dirty by the group of leaders who did nothing more than quarrelling for the post.

Internet has been the most revolutionary convergence of communication tools. The greatest beneficial aspect of the internet as a communication tool has been the possibility for each and every person with internet access to communicate globally. Communicating to the world has never been as easy as it is now. Loads of services, also collectively known as social media, such as blogs, microblogs, photo/video sharing and social networking allow users to publish information and/or comments on available information so easily that time and again users tend to forget the bigger impact that those information or comments may have. Continue reading “Writing Responsibly on Internet”

Distribution channel will change in future and we have no control over what people will use. They may use something we don’t know today. At the publishing house, we have to specialize on producing good stories.

When I was in Hamburg, Germany to attend the first of three phases of the Journalism in Digital World at the International Academy of Journalism – Intajour, one of the big question amongst the fellows there was ‘how the upcoming technology going to change journalism.’

The advent of the Internet followed by the development of mobile devices- such as smartphones, e-readers and tablets – which people increasingly use to read the news has to change journalism someway, many of us believed. For a media house, and journalists the possible further development of new platforms poses a big opportunity (to become early adopter of profitable venture among upcoming developments) and a threat (how to remodel journalism to perfectly harness the capability of the platform). Continue reading “Good journalism is good for journalism”

(This post is a result of my participation in the South Asia Meeting on the Freedom of Expression and the Internet in Kathmandu, 2-4 November. This is my personal opinion but I owe to participants of the meeting whose comments may have helped me to shape this.)

By Internet intermediaries, I mean those companies or people who has a role in providing internet services to the people including, but not limited to, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), webhosts, web service providers, website owners, and also cyber cafes and telecommunication companies. Continue reading “Internet Intermediaries & Freedom of Expression”